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Wednesday, November 25, 2015

It's been quiet in my sewing room recently, so I can do a little more catching up in this post. Back in mid-October, I went on a retreat for a fabulous weekend of sewing with some fellow VMQG members. It was somuchfun! In addition to just gabbing away with fellow quilting fiends, I finally managed to make a name tag for myself, only five years after joining the guild, and I also contributed a block to a group quilt that's in progress. But I spent most of my time working on the following:

It's the second in my new series of boro quilts. Alas, I haven't worked on it since the retreat, but it's a high priority, and I will finish it soon.

A couple of weekends ago, I made another two indigo scarves for my Etsy shop:

Although it's pretty late in the day, I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday on The Needle and Thread Network and Freshly Pieced. Hope all of your fiber-related adventures are happy ones, and for those of you in the U.S., happy turkey day tomorrow!

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

I've been lazy about taking photographs and blogging over the past several months, but that doesn't mean that I haven't been busy with textiles. I did a lot more indigo dyeing beyond what I showed a few months back, and I've been working on various projects since September.

Over the past several months, I've admired the matchstick quilting that a lot of VMQG members have been doing lately, which beautifully transforms the texture of a quilt--it becomes almost like a woven wall hanging. I had been waiting for the right project to try the technique myself, and when I happened upon some photos of Japanese boro patchworks online back in September, I knew I'd found the right inspiration. Boro typically involves the use of old indigo-dyed cottons, which are given new life through patchwork and heavy quilting by hand to keep worn scraps together. I decided to dig into my collection of Japanese cottons and use matchstick quilting to produce an updated, boro-inspired wall hanging:

I just love the results. There was something wonderfully meditative about doing the matchstick quilting, which didn't bore me at all, and the visual effect from using two different variegated threads (40 wt YLI and 50 wt Mettler) is really eye-catching. This quilt is the first of what will be a series of boro-inspired wall quilts.

VMQG was the "featured quilter" at the recent show of the Vancouver Quilt Guild, so our guild did a special "Modern Mini" challenge to showcase modern quilting: solids only, maximum 80" around, and an emphasis on modern techniques and designs. The exhibit had about 26 quilts by guild members, including mine:

"Oakshott Lattice," another of my lattice quilts, features a repurposed classic block and an emphasis on graphic design that are both characteristic of "modern quilting." The quilt ended up looking very Amish, thanks to the black and jewel-tone Oakshott shot cottons. But that seems entirely appropriate, since the 1970s quilting revival grew in part from the modern art world's recognition of the powerful design qualities of Amish quilts.

More recently, I've started making scarves from my indigo-dyed gauze fabrics, so that I can add some much-needed inventory to my poor, neglected Etsy shop:

Finally, here's something on my design wall:

I'm not sure where it's going, but a dear friend gave me some gorgeous shibori dyed cottons from the grand old days of Kasuri Dyeworks in Berkeley, and I really, really want to work with them.

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About me

Apart from the career that keeps a roof over my head, I am a quilter, crafter, and general fabriholic. I live in beautiful Vancouver, BC, where I spend as much time as possible in my sewing studio working with an overflowing collection of cottons, silks, and other textiles. Even with more than twenty years of quilting experience, I am still learning with every quilt I make.